Wretched Power | 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐏𝐎𝐄𝐓𝐒 𝐒𝐎𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐓𝐘 (BOOK ONE)

| CHAPTER THREE |

Lana wasn't happy when she entered her dorm, or on the journey to her dorm, but her misery slowly subsided when she saw her brothers sitting on her bed and leaning against the windowsill, waiting. 

     "Clark. Bernie... I thought you'd gone," she beamed with a smile. 

     The brothers shared a glance with her and pushed themselves to their feet, waving their younger sister over. Bernard outstretched the desk chair for her and she sat down, staring up at her brothers, anxious as they stayed silent and looked at each other. 

     "What?" 

     "We know you're probably mad at us for taking away more than half of your curriculums, but..." Was this really why they came back? 

     "Lana, you haven't spoken about Dad since he died in the plane crash." That was over a month ago. Her brother sounded worried. 

     "You're right..." Lana let out a deep sigh as she looked down at her hands in her lap and then back at her brother. "Come here, I'm gonna lay my head gently on your shoulder. We can cry, hug -- maybe even slow dance." 

     "Don't patronize me, Lana. Dad is dead and you're acting like nothing happened." 

     Lana rose from her seat. "What do you want me to say?"

     "Say something! Anything. Aren't you angry? Aren't you sad?" Clark spoke as if she wasn't capable of human emotion. "All you do is stay silent about everything with your nose deep in a book." 

     "Sadness and anger, huh? Sounds good. I've got nothing Clark, all right? Nothing. I can't bring Dad back, but you know what I can do? I can make everything go away for a few hours and read five chapters of a book, okay?" It was conversations like these when Clark and Bernard forgot Lana was just a child. She handled things and spoke in a much more mature manner. 

     She sighed. "Look, I've got to unpack everything before tonight." She spoke, and they took the hint. They left without another word. 

     Lana hated that they were right. 

     She was trying to forget everything and act like nothing happened. She was trying to act as though she wasn't in a plane crash. She was acting as though she didn't survive. She wasn't acting as though she cried for her father when she regained consciousness, only to see his face cut up from the shards of metal and debris, bleeding out of every office, unresponsive. She was acting as though she didn't see him get carried away in a body bag on a stretcher. She wasn't acting as though she had to stay in the hospital for three weeks, have a blood transfusion and get stitches on her face which would soon turn into a scar. She was acting as though she didn't already have a bully and a 'clever' nickname. She was acting as though nothing happened. 

     She was acting as if she had already died. 

     She sat glumly on her bed and wiped away the tear that escape her eye. She looked at the photograph that she had propped up on her nightstand. It was of her family just before they left France. Lana noticed how she was slightly further apart from the family. With them but not with them. She thought only mentally, that was the case, but now she had a physical example. 

     She wasn't a part of her family.